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Tucked into the folds of the order paper of the fall session of Parliament are two potential time bombs for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

The first — dealing with fetal rights — will test Harper’s election promise to keep a lid on the abortion debate.

In the last campaign, the prime minister vowed that the issue would not be reopened on his watch. But many Conservative MPs, including some senior ministers, beg to differ.

Between Monday’s reopening of Parliament and Thanksgiving, the House of Commons is expected to vote on a motion that would, if adopted, task a committee with exploring the notion of granting the fetus rights equal to those of the mother.

Introduced by Kitchener MP Stephen Woodworth, the motion will provide the first opportunity for a majority Conservative Parliament to vote on abortion rights since a Tory bill on the issue died in the Senate in the early 1990s.

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The vote is expected to be a tight one and that possibility was compounded by the departure this summer of former minister Bev Oda and New Democrat MP Denise Savoie. Their resignations have cost opponents of the motion two votes. (Another pro-choice vote was lost in the spring when MP Lee Richardson headed back to Alberta and a position in Premier Alison Redford’s inner circle).

The second debate, dealing with language rights, could give government MPs an early appreciation of the greater perils of the Quebec-Ottawa balancing act in the wake of the Parti Quebecois’ election victory.

It could provide the incoming Quebec government with a fresh load of sovereigntist ammunition.

Introduced by the NDP’s Alexandrine Latendresse, Bill C-419 would require future officers of Parliament to be able to function in both official languages without the help of an interpreter.

If adopted, her bill would apply to 10 federal positions, including chief electoral officer and auditor general.

Much more than the routine haggling between the two levels of government over the division of powers, the issues raised by Bill C-419 touch a nerve in Quebec.

For an overwhelming majority of Quebecers, its dispositions only affirm the equality of French with English in Canada’s national institutions, a priniciple most consider essential.

After almost 50 years after the adoption of the Official Languages Act, the argument that the pool of qualified bilingual candidates for some of the highest-profile positions in the federal capital is too shallow to make fluency in French and English a job requirement is wearing extremely thin in Quebec.

Harper’s cabinet got a taste of that last fall when various Quebec-bound ministers ran into a vocal backlash over the appointment of a non-bilingual auditor general.

The NDP bill was initially dismissed by heritage minister James Moore. But then, Tourism Minister Maxime Bernier stepped in to support it. Since then, government spin-doctors have retreated behind a wall of silence.

With the NDP and the Liberals committed to the principle of bilingual appointees, the Conservatives — if they continue to oppose the bill — are really fighting a rearguard battle. One way or another, the writing is ultimately on the wall for unilingual aspirants to the posts of parliamentary officers.

While each vote could expose cracks in the Conservative wall of caucus unity, both also present the prime minister with an opportunity.

On the abortion issue, Harper has made his wishes crystal clear. He wants the motion defeated. If his view prevails, he will have achieved his goal of shutting down the debate for the duration of this Parliament.

And while the prime minister is mostly playing defence on abortion rights, the bilingualism bill gives him the option to go on the offensive on the Quebec front and speak to Quebecers over the head of the incoming sovereigntist government.

There has been speculation that the Conservatives could replace the NDP bill with one of their own — in the same way as Harper appropriated the Quebec nation resolution six years ago.

That would send a strong signal that the prime minister will not allow the PQ to frame the coming period of uneasy Quebec-Ottawa cohabitation on its own predictable terms.

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